I love me

Is Your Parenting Style Raising Narcissistic Kids

I love meWe all know people who are self-absorbed, full of themselves and over-confident. They started out as kids someday. So it is worth asking, Is your parenting style raising narcissistic kids?. What is food for thought is that it might be easier to fall into this trap than parents realise. Psychologists say that they are coming across more adults who are narcissistic (self-absorbed) and it can be linked to how they were raised.

Parents who reportedly “overvalue” their children might be at risk of raising narcissistic children. That healthy dose of confidence is welcome but when it crosses over to the end of being excessive it has negative effects on the same children that we were trying to build self-esteem in. Some things to watch out for are:-

  • Children who are made to believe that they are more special and more entitled than other children may internalise this and therefore think they are superior to other people. This does not translate well in social interactions. 
  • Parents should show their kids warmth and appreciation without promoting the idea that they are superior to other people. In the right does you raise children with solid self-esteem.
  • Brummelman said that by the age of 7 or 8, children develop the ability to describe whether they are happy with themselves or not. It is also at this age that they start to compare themselves with others. It is an age when they may be especially sensitive to parental influence. 
  • The most harmful belief that a person can have is that they are superior to others. “Men are better than women, my race is better than your race, my religion is superior to your religion.”
  • Narcissistic individuals feel superior to others, focus a lot on personal successes and believe they deserve special treatment. When they feel humiliated, they often lash out aggressively or even violently.

The advice by Brummelman, who has done extensive research in this area is that raising narcissistic children can be avoided both during the ages of 7 to 12 and later. One of the main ways to do this is for parents to develop a way to convey affection and appreciation for a child without necessarily putting a child on a pedestal and without telling the child he is better than others. 

culled from WashingtonPost 
photo source: ironstrikes.com
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